These days the delay between the Six Nations season ending and all eyes swivelling to the next big adventure lasts minutes rather than weeks. Even the gripping final weekend of the 2007 tournament felt like a Pathe newsreel as English officials whipped out their diaries yesterday and began counting the hours until the World Cup starts in September. For everyone involved, not least Brian Ashton, there is no time for idle reflection.

England have already indicated to the International Rugby Board they would like an amendment to the August 14 deadline for naming the final 30-man squad to represent them in France. If the date remains unchanged, - and tournament organisers are keen not to postpone it - the head coaches of England and France will have to name their men four days before the scheduled final warm-up match in Marseille on August 18.

Tournament rules do allow for injured players to be replaced but, if the IRB stands firm, Ashton will have one game less to identify his best combination. As England may have to prepare to face South Africa in Bloemfontein on May 26 without several leading players who could be involved in the Heineken Cup or European Challenge Cup finals the previous weekend, time is suddenly of the essence.

As it is, England will have to shoehorn their tournament preparations into a tight window. The players will have three weeks' holiday at the end of the South African tour but will then attend a training camp from June 25. Their off-season will have spanned eight weeks before they assemble to meet Wales at Twickenham in August.

No wonder Rob Andrew, the RFU's director of elite rugby, is reiterating the need for club and country to hammer out a deal which reduces the burden on the top players in return for increased funding. "For 11 years every elite player has been pulled from pillar to post," said Andrew. "In the end it's not fair on them."

There was no sense from the RFU's chief executive, Francis Baron, however, that an agreement is any closer than it was a month ago. If anything the fact that Premier Rugby has inquired about hiring Wembley for the season-launching London double-header on September 15, despite the fact Twickenham is available at cost price, and also want to play a World XV game in May to generate extra revenue would suggest the clubs are still examining ways of ploughing their own furrow.

At least the English game is £202,000 richer for having finished third rather than fourth in this year's Six Nations table but no one at the RFU is taking that as a sign of automatic World Cup prosperity. While Ashton is required to nominate a wider pool of 40 to 50 players to the World Cup organisers in early June, Andrew accepts England's squad planning is miles adrift in comparison with the equivalent stage in 2003 when Clive Woodward's side had just completed a grand slam.

"The last World Cup side took six years to develop, we've got six months," sighed the former England fly-half, as conscious as anyone of the need to assemble a secure forward unit capable of providing quick ball to dangerous backs without selecting a whole XV barely out of nappies. "We all know about the youth-experience balance. If you shift it too far one way they can't run around the field; if you shift it too far the other there's a lack of experience which probably cost us on Saturday."

It was also Andrew's opinion that Jonny Wilkinson can fit into Ashton's vision of a new free-flowing England as opposed to the kicking game with which he became associated earlier in his Test career .

One of the most exciting Six Nations campaigns in recent years, attended and watched by record numbers and memorable for its Celtic passion, Gallic sang-froid and Italian glee is already a shrinking blur in the rear-view mirror.